At The Office-I
1367 Words
Grier walked through reception of the lobby towards the elevator pretending she didn’t hear Hazel calling her name. When the woman grabbed her arm just short of Grier reaching her intended destination, she shot Hazel an annoyed glance. “What do you want?”
“We need to talk! You didn’t answer any of my calls.”
“You’ve been sleeping with my boyfriend for a month. I think I have right to decline your calls.”
“If you would just let me explain!”
“No. The explanation is for your benefit. Not mine. I don’t care why you did it. I only care you did. I would prefer if we never saw each other again.”
“We’ve been friends for ten years!”
“Which you gave no consideration to when you screwed Arlo in my bed.”
“You can simply cut me off so easily?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“Grier! It’s the holiday season. You’re not going to dump me forever at the holidays.”
“I couldn’t care less if today was the last day before the world exploded. We’re done. I don’t do betrayals, Hazel. You better than anyone know this.”
“What about Christmas?”
“What about it?”
“It’s only two weeks away.”
“So?”
“But it’s the holidays. I always spend the holidays with you in Coldreach.”
Grier looked at Hazel in stunned surprise at her audacity and gave a stunned laugh, “are you kidding me? No. You are not still invited to my family’s home for the holidays. I called my parents yesterday and told them what happened.”
Hazel’s face turned red. “You told them!”
“Yes. I told them. I told them everything!”
Hazel was huffing in disbelief.
“Everything?”
“I even told my sister how I heard you telling the guy I’ve been seeing for the last six months to c*m inside you.” She took delight in the way Hazel turned from red to a putrid green color. “She gave you a nickname.”
“What?” Hazel’s jaw set furiously.
“Her new name for you is Cumbucket.”
“What?”
“She said it. It stuck. My mother and father found it hilarious and fitting for you given what I heard you saying to Arlo.”
“You told your dad?” Hazel’s eyes watered incredulously. “No.”
“I was upset. I called my family for support. They supported me.”
“How could you? How could you tell them all the gory details? I was already ashamed, but this makes it even worse. Shame on you, Grier!”
“Excuse me?”
“Why would you tell them? They’re –”
“My family. Before you open your filthy disgusting traitorous mouth to claim them, they are my family, not yours. You know them because of me. They treated you like you were one of our family because of me. When push comes to shove my family will always have my back. Not yours. Even if, I was in the wrong here, which I most assuredly am not, it would be my back they have and not yours and do you know why?” She stepped closer to her friend, not backing away from the emotion she was feeling, or Hazel was portraying, “they are my family and you are not.”
“You always said your family was my family.”
“Until you betrayed me. A month! You were sleeping with him for a month. You sat in my apartment a week ago congratulating me for thinking I might be falling in love with the guy you were screwing. I can’t even begin to rationalize in my head why you would do such a thing.”
“Can I explain?”
“What is to explain? You screwed the guy I was dating. There is nothing more to explain. I don’t need your excuses. They’re worthless to me.”
“You get everything. I just wanted to live in your shoes for just a little bit.” Hazel whispered. “I wanted to be you and see how it was for you. I only wanted to be like you.”
“You’re so stupid,” Grier shook her head furiously. “You are amazing on your own. You spend so much time trying to be something you’re not you miss out on being your authentic self. You’re funny and quirky and your personality is usually effervescent.”
“You know the real me.”
“I thought I did but I never once considered you’d sleep with someone, I was interested in.” Grier looked at her phone. “I’ve got five minutes to get upstairs to get there before Mr. Santos fires me for being tardy. I’m leaving now. Please, don’t bother me again. We’re no longer friends.”
She pressed the button for the special elevator programmed with her fingerprint to take her to the top floor of the Santos Confectionary Headquarters building and then rolled her eyes when Hazel threw herself down on the floor.
“You can’t leave me like this. How can you abandon me? I have nobody else and you’re going to leave me all alone, even at Christmas. I know you’re not so cold, Grier. Please.” She was dragging herself along the floor clutching Grier’s ankle, crying pitifully.
“For the love of God get some dignity!” Grier hissed at her. She felt her skin bristling with humiliation as multiple people were now staring at them.
“She’s my best friend and she just uninvited me to Christmas with her family. I have no family. My parents died and I was an only child,” Hazel wailed at a man who was waiting for another elevator to arrive.
As the man looked at Grier she shrugged carelessly, “She f****d my boyfriend on the weekend. Would your family want someone like her passing the gravy?”
Hazel sat up at Grier’s words, “you can’t keep telling people this.”
“Why not? I’m not ashamed. I did nothing wrong. You and Arlo did. It’s your failures not mine and I am not going to let either of you guilt trip me into feeling bad for something I truly was not a part of.” She put her hands on her hips and stared furiously down at Hazel. “If I want to take a billboard out in Times Square saying Hazel is a lying cheating b***h of a woman, I can.”
“You can’t!”
“The hell I can’t. I even have witnesses.” Grier bent as much as she could in her pencil skirt to unwrap Hazel’s hands from her calf, “by the way, I sent the duvet and the shams to your address since you loved it so much you were begging him to make you orgasm all over it. You can get it dry cleaned or you can wrap yourself up in the stains of the sins you and Arlo made on it, but I don’t want it any longer.”
“Grier!”
Grier looked at the curious bystander, “I paid nearly two hundred dollars for the set and she and her lover defiled them. Would you want it on your bed?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Should I call security for you?” He glared at Hazel, “you’re trespassing.”
“She works here.”
“Really? Where?”
“Front desk.”
“I’ve never noticed her.”
She gave a chuckle as Hazel squealed with indignation at the comment. The other woman sat up righteously to defend herself and Grier took the opportunity to evade her grasp and duck into the private elevator and watched the doors close on the woman’s now grappling hands as she tried to scurry to catch Grier again.
“She reminds me of the weird creature from the Ring.” She mumbled under her breath as the elevator shot upwards to the top floor.
- Writer
